Thanks Will, good to meet you as well! And just to note, I also made a small financial contribution to HOT as well! You still have a bit of time (if you're in the US) to make a (2014) tax deductible donation to HOT: http://hot.openstreetmap.org/donate

Hi, I looked and you do have the one 'changeset' (editing session) where you added this one node - http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3145554676 - it looks like you added the museum. Although the changes are immediate (or near) to the database, it takes a little while for the map to be rendered with the new data. Feel free to reach out to me and take a look at http://LearnOSM.org for more instruction.

For the most part your edits look pretty good. I adjusted a few things such as the track/bus lane, and merged multi-segment footways into one. Take a look and feel free to ask questions. One thing I noticed is your most recent edits you stopped using the changeset comment, please leave a comment so it's easier for other mappers to figure out what you were intending. Thanks for contributing!

Yes, welcome - there is a good self-training program here: http://LearnOSM.org - also, I'm not familiar with California, but there may be a local community/group you can join, for some face-to-face Q&A.
=Russ

Thanks for this, and welcome to OSM; just curious - if you are looking for other individual's stories, you can actually RSS the diary, i.e. how I saw this. I have a rather fun history with OSM, told most of it in a webinar just a few hours ago. Some of it is in my diary: - been meaning to post much more, will try to get back at it

OSM cannot help you directly, but you are more than welcome to use OSM as component(s) in your map. Some of the information you are looking at collecting might not be 'good' data for OSM, but some of it may. For example, we definitely encourage folks to map wooded areas using natural=wood and other descriptive tags; and if you have more detail about individual trees you can also add those using natural=tree, species=, etc. But we don't want to include private information, like the name and photo of the producer. However you could link your data (contained in an external database as an example) to OSM or vice versa. I would suggest you look at this website for some more information and examples: http://switch2osm.org/

Hello, welcome to OSM! Thank you for contributing to the project, especially in these areas impacted by Yolanda/Haiyan. You may be interested in following/participating in the collaborative efforts of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Typhoon_Haiyan

In general, if you think you're improving the map, please do - in this case adding the missing roads as unclassified is better than them not being there. However, if you are using the default Bing imagery, it is outdated and lots of the smaller roads are impassible; see the documentation linked above for areas/ways to get post-disaster imagery as well as related tasks for various areas via the HOT tasking manager - http://tasks.hotosm.org/

Just a couple of things I noticed in your edits; first, please use the changeset comment (i.e. when you save) - this lets other mappers know what you intended to do so we can better give advise - it can be something simple like "added missing road(s)..." Second, you may be using unclassified incorrectly - if you mean "I'm not sure what kind of road this is", use highway=road; unclassified is actually a meaningful classification. As an example one road you added looked like a driveway, in that case highway=service, service=driveway may be a better classification. See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway for details.

Looks like a good start, and as usually an improvement to the map/data is an improvement.

In general, it would be better to actually intersect the tracks with the barrier; i.e. create a node where the two lines cross. This will help routing engines determine that they do indeed intersect, versus a bridge that goes over the feature.

As for the dry wash, it would be best to map the entirety of the 'stream'; see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:stream for more details to map it as an 'intermittent' stream, which I am guessing that water does flow down it when there is rain (maybe it even has a name?).

No problem Richard, always happy to help. I guess we'll have to call this 'good' for now. I looked again and can't determine from the imagery exactly where the actually springs are, but as you say 'it's on the map' and any improvement is just that.

Looks like you've found yourself mapping what we typically refer to as a 'TIGER Desert', see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER_fixup for more info. I would say you're most likely correct about the Haekel/Hackle name discrepancies (if you saw it on a sign, I'd go with that). And remember these roads originated from census workers and mapping obviously wasn't their focus (or forte). Little tracks are useful for emergency services (think firefighters trying to get way back somewhere) but if they no longer exist (or they're just so far off the truth) I'd say delete them - it's sometimes just easier to re-trace anyway.

As for the Hot Well Dunes, first there were two points both basically saying the same thing, but were not 'on top of' anything that looked like campsites. I looked around in the Bing imagery and found what looks to be camping (or at least picnic areas) - can you confirm there is one closer to Haekel Road and one further into the dunes? I used the existing POI's and expanded them to polygons around those two (hopefully) camping areas. Lastly I removed the leisure=hot_spring tag and created a new POI for what looked like the spring (is that it in the 'square' tree frame?).

Hope you don't mind me prying a bit, but could you elaborate on why it seemed difficult then vs. now? Did you have previous mapping/GIS/geospatial knowledge or was this your first course in the field? Did taking this course give you more confidence in being able to edit OSM?

Welcome to OSM, and unfortunately - yes, Wyoming is going to be big and lonely as far as mapping goes (for a while at least, hope that changes). Not that I wouldn't love to see you helping out Northern Colorado, we have a pretty robust community and your efforts may be better directed towards your state. Of course your welcome to map where you want and if you're interested, check out http://www.meetup.com/OSM-Colorado/ - maybe either we'll have an event up in FC that you can make or if you happen to be further south during another, feel free to drop in.

Also let me know if you'd like some tips contacting other mappers in your beautiful state, and/or getting a local group going. I'm actually part of the American Red Cross CO/WY Region so hopefully I'll be able to encourage some of the volunteers up that way to start mapping.